


The Story Always Ends the Same Way

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Decisions, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, F/M, stories, trigger warning: cancer is among various analogies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: “Don’t you think the situation is a bit different?” She’s hoarse, overtired and talked out, but they need to have this conversation again.Sheneeds to have this conversation again.His fingers stroke her hair, tuck a lock behind her ear. “It’s close enough, and you know it.”Of course she knows it.But he tells the story, anyway.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 48
Kudos: 59





	The Story Always Ends the Same Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeeblack75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeblack75/gifts), [cnroth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnroth/gifts), [MiaCooper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaCooper/gifts), [traccigaryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/traccigaryn/gifts).



> For coffeeblack75, cnroth, MiaCooper, and traccigaryn. Thank you for inspirational character analysis, debates, and enthusiasm. I stan you all.

“I won’t make that mistake again.”

That’s what he says.

Her head is on his chest, his voice flowing in one ear and rumbling under the other. Their legs are tangled, sheets in crumpled waves to their waists, but the storage containers around their bed, like others throughout the shelter, stand in neat rows awaiting transport, perfect formation to become nothing and then re-form exactly the same except different.

Sunlight peeks through the window, and she tells herself that’s why her eyes burn. It’s the creeping, unwelcome brightness of a dawning sun, not the knowledge that today they will go back to the ship.

No, _she_ will go back to the ship. _He_ will go back to the ship.

_ They_ will die on this planet. 

“Don’t you think the situation is a bit different?” She’s hoarse, overtired and talked out, but they need to have this conversation again.

_ She_ needs to have this conversation again. 

His fingers stroke her hair, tuck a lock behind her ear. “It’s close enough, and you know it.”

Of course she knows it. 

But he tells the story, anyway. 

“I had been in the Maquis for five months, and was taking on bigger and riskier missions.” His hand drops to her shoulder, encircling her, enfolding her in an intimacy that is both balm and wound. “I thought all the Starfleet regulations and protocols were for a different person, not someone in my situation — a leader with crewmembers who had become my family as much as they were my comrades.”

She closes her eyes and she is on the _Val Jean_. She only saw the ship for a few seconds on _Voyager’s_ viewscreen, never even stepped inside, but he has made every centimeter of the Condor-class raider real to her, from the quarters where his mother’s beaded necklace hung above a viewport to catch light from the stars, to the engines B’Elanna kept alive with equal measures of caresses and curses. Deck plating vibrated on good days, pitched and rolled on bad ones. Everything smelled of burned relays and sweat. 

“So I allowed it, and congratulated myself on my newfound freedom. But being in a relationship with Seska compromised my entire operation.”

“I’m hardly a Cardassian spy.” She tries to smile, but it doesn’t work. Sometimes, he concedes this point, and the conversation shifts until she argues his side, words like _duty_ and _responsibility_ spilling out unbidden. Most times, he continues, opening up his own shame to remind them both of the danger.

But maybe, just maybe, the story will end differently this time. Science revises hypotheses, controlled experiments render different results, the laws of nature bend when they should remain unyielding.

Perhaps this time, they can be Alexander Fleming and discover penicillin growing in an unattended petri dish, a lucky find after time away from the lab, a new age of human prosperity ushered in by observation and care. 

Because every other time, they’ve been Marie Curie, poisoned by their own experiment, blinded and burned and aware that their symptoms will only get worse.

“I wish this was Seska’s fault, Kathryn. I wish I could blame her. But it was me. I was the problem. I couldn’t send her on dangerous missions. I couldn’t make decisions quickly because her safety was most important.” He flinches. “I couldn’t be the leader my people deserved.”

“So after you didn’t order Seska to report to the engine bay and Griffin, Machado, and Cobale died in the firefight with the Cardassians, you broke up with Seska to protect your crew.” She speaks quickly, rushing his tale of self-realization as she refocuses on her own. The hypothesis isn’t going to change, the experiment results will be the same, and, although the air seems under-oxygenated and the gravity off-kilter, the laws of nature are intact.

They are Marie Curie again.

“People died because I couldn’t risk the woman I loved. I won’t let either of us make that mistake.” His voice fades as if far away, not below her and around her. “We both know better.”

The first time they discussed this, the conversation was craggy and raw, not yet smoothed by repetition. They quickly figured out, though, that they’d had the same Ethics instructor at Starfleet Command School — a little Rigelian whose waggling index finger would punctuate pontifications on the sacrosanct nature of the hierarchy. A romantic relationship between a captain and any direct report would lead to the breakdown of an entire command structure, a loss of clear leadership and a danger to any mission. 

That talk had been over dinner, the shelter table laden with food neither of them could eat. His gaze dropped to his plate when he admitted that, almost a year before, when he had asked if she would pair off with a member of her crew, he had known what she would say but needed to hear it. 

Just as she knows what he is about to say now. The conversation inches deeper and deeper each time, a knife searching for the source of an already-metastasized cancer, and he’s about to cut to the ugly core. 

“We’ll be friends. We’ll be best friends and, someday, Kathryn, when we make it home —”

Her head snaps up, cheek warm, a red imprint from her ear quickly fading from his skin. “I don’t want you to wait for me. If you meet someone —”

“If either of us meets someone —” His arm drops to her waist, eyes intent on hers.

She chokes back something sour in the back of her throat. “Don’t try to protect me, Chakotay. We’re both adults and you’ll have more choices than I will. It could be a long time before we —”

His head shakes.

And it all breaks apart. 

This conversation, this latest attempt to turn radioactivity into penicillin, to cut out the cancer, to protect themselves from the unprotectable — it shatters like glass, and becomes sharp, piercing shards, memories of moments, transience in the guise of permanence. 

Light streams in through the shelter windows.

This home, this life, is about to become another story for him, another hypothesis for her — confirmed by repeated, irrefutable evidence.

She rolls away, his arm falls, and she swings her legs to the side of the bed.

It’s time to get up, pull on a uniform, and find a way forward.


End file.
